In my other life exams were abundant and haunting. Some exams determined years (at least within the time-loop that is academia). One hour to mark a new timeline! Of course you would spend your all fixated on it and flipping through each question three times when they did arrive.
But what I liked about them is that checkpoint quality. The doors opened for you to walk through and the exam period is going to pass whether you knew everything or nothing at all. A checkpoint. Close the book finally. Start again.
The very reason I like them is probably the very reason I despise them though. For the issue about having exams is that you get used to them being the ONLY checkpoints in your life. And that’s a serious negative, especially when you no longer have exams, or especially when you did have exams. Anyone that’s gone through enough rigorous (nonsense) schooling knows that once the exam is done, you’re done. It’s over. And once you go through enough of that seemingly pointless grind (despite the high to revel in once you’re out each one) you can be certain once you get the option to not have checkpoints, you’ll be sure to choose not to. Because exams associate checkpoints with sickening all-nighters. The anticipation now comes plagued with sickness whenever you DO anticipate.
Turning the page feels too hard. So now that no one has any thumb over you, you learn to resign myself to the most base of pastimes and slowly kicking the can. You feel you did enough already, even though that’s actually the farthest from the case. You’ll have trouble admitting it though, because nothing is more frustrating than to realize all of those exams were arbitrary, mostly useless unwanted stresses that contributed little to your total life fulfillment.
After mentally preparing and accepting that you do have a lot more in store — once you get over that nausea — you will now have to steady yourself past the nausea of how much or how far and what standards you’ll set yourself to. And then once you do that you have to unlearn this destructive dynamic of do something good and then three things bad because you .deserve it. (but it’s more like you’re sedated beyond belief and can’t see how these things are destroying you softly).
There are more components to this whole structure of how school kills you softly and then a job fashions the coffin but why waste time thinking of that when you can instead think of the freedom you got now and what you’re gonna do with it?
So here’s a checkpoint. What do you want to see on the next page?